Vigil could reduce scope for Darksiders 3 to improve detail

Smaller world could lead to increase in detail, suggests Darksiders II dev.

Vigil Games would consider reducing the size and scope of a third Darksiders game if it led to "more detail in the world", Darksiders II's lead designer Haydn Dalton has told VideoGamer.com.

"The only people who can really shape if we do [another] Darksiders or not is basically the public," Dalton told VideoGamer.com during a recent Darksiders II press trip.

"If we come out and it does really well then I think it's really compelling; we can't not come out and maybe do something else in the Darksiders franchise.

"If Jason's [Rubin, President, THQ] sat there and we go and sell 4 or 5 million units, I'm pretty sure he won't say, 'Let's go and do something different now'. Maybe what he might do is turn around and say, 'We'll do another Darksiders game, but we'll try and reduce the scope so that we can make it even higher polished'. Because our scope is huge. Maybe he says, 'Bring the scope down a little bit, we'll still do another game but it's a lot more focused'. That's not such a bad thing to do either."

Darksiders II's world is said to be considerably larger than the first game. According to one report, each of the four game's zones are equivalent in size to the entirety of the first game.

But Dalton says that the gameplay within those areas is more important than the size of the world, and the pay-off for reducing the scope of a third game could be beneficial to the overall experience.

"It depends on how much the reduction of the scope is, right? We've done a huge world in this one, but [though] reducing the size of the world might be seen as a big impact from a player point of view, you know what, we might do a lot more interaction within the world if the world was smaller.

"And there might be even more polish, there might be a lot more animated things in the environment and a lot more detail or destruction or whatever it might be in the world because of a reduce in size. Rather than doing sheer square-footage, it's more like what can you do in less room by focusing on it, and depth [and] interaction within a smaller environment.

"Initially it seems like if you make it smaller that's not as good. Well, that's not necessarily true. Quantity is not about quality. Just because you make something bigger doesn't mean it's better. That's something people are saying to us: 'You keep quoting about size'. I tend to not really go on about the physical size of the world so much because it's more about what you're doing within that area that's important to me."

Darksiders II launches on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on August 21. A Wii U version is also in development.

Darksiders II
Darksiders II

on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Wii U

Darksiders II follows the exploits of DEATH, one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, in a weavin...